


Vetting Sorgan

by NiCad



Series: A New Way [3]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: A lot can happen in three weeks, Abandonment, Angst, Din is oblivious until it's too late, Explaining Omera, F/M, Gen, Rejection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 09:01:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25348138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NiCad/pseuds/NiCad
Summary: With all the warning in the world, Omera brings her hands to his helmet. Places her thumbs against the vertical edges over his jaws. Slides her fingers along the rim at the bottom.All this time, he’d been looking for a safe place for the kid. He’d been so focused on what he was looking for that he had missed what was looking right back at him.[Why Din takes so long to stop Omera.]
Series: A New Way [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1699135
Comments: 28
Kudos: 68





	Vetting Sorgan

_When every line speaks the language of love  
It never held the meaning I was thinking of  
And I lost the line between right or wrong  
I just want to find the place where I belong_

Beth Orton, [Stolen Car](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ35dnfYKrQ)

Omera and Din sit by the firelight. Winta and the baby are off with the other children, the baby most likely showing the other kids how to hunt frogs in the dark. Cara is out on patrol, but Din knows she’ll be back shortly. So, for now, they enjoy a companionable silence.

But out here, silence is a relative thing. The crickets are chirping, the frogs are peeping, the children’s voices are warbling in the distance. “Silence” simply means that no response is necessary at the moment. No demanding questions. No plans to be hashed out.

No blasts from the forest.

It’s nice.

Omera doesn’t have many opportunities like this. To sit with another adult and not have to say anything. For as loud as the Mandalorian’s armor is on the eyes, all shine and hard surfaces, the man within it is disarmingly quiet. Sometimes, his silence is menacing. Deadly. A hunter stalking prey. But often, his silence is relaxed. Just… watching. Listening. Taking it all in. His posture on the cross-section of log serving as a seat indicates the second kind of silence right now. He’s leaning forward, feet apart, elbows on his knees, T-visored gaze canted down to his hands as he cleans his disassembled sidearm blaster, most of its components spread out on a red cloth between his feet. She’s tempted to ask him what’s on his mind, but has learned that such questions are answered with silence as often as not. He’ll speak when he has something to say or is asked a substantive question. Until then, it’s best to let his wheels turn on their own.

For his part, Din is listening to the children play in the distance. He has the volume turned up in the helmet and he can hear most of what’s going on with clarity. The children play well together. Even more, they’re enamored with the kid. The tiny green baby hasn’t yet managed to spook them by doing anything… powerful. So far, the worst he’s done is gross them out with the frog-eating. All things considered, it’s a good sign.

A very good sign.

He hears Cara’s approaching footsteps and dials the volume back, anticipating the raucous camaraderie that she is sure to bring. He likes it in small doses and she always seems to know when he’s had enough, so it all works out. Sure enough, she moseys up to the fire with two cups of spotchka. “Sorry to interrupt the intense conversation,” she says as she hands one cup to Omera, then settles herself on another cross-section of log with the other, the three of them forming a triangle around the fire. She knows enough not to bring any for Din by now, sparing him the refusal. He’d worked his way through a cup on his own earlier, taking his time with a solitary dinner in the barn. He’s still a little buzzed, and that’s fine. The muscle memory of cleaning the blaster is seared into his nervous system. He could clean, assemble, and load it with half of his brain scooped out of his skull. Had, in fact, been trained in his late teens to do so after snorting a line of spice to ensure he could still protect himself while under the influence. All under the watchful eye of his instructor.

This is the Way.

“Your patrol went well?” Omera asks.

“All clear,” Cara lifts her cup in a toast and takes a sip. “Happy one-week anniversary since the take-down. No sign of any stragglers since.”

Din turns his head to Cara. “We should check their camp tomorrow. Make sure they’ve cleared out. See what they left behind.”

Cara nods. “Good idea.” She casts a glance in Omera’s direction. “Think you can hold the fort while we’re out?”

Omera smiles. “Of course.” Now that they’re on the topic of last week, she pitches a comment to Din. “Scrapping the AT-ST looks like it’s coming along well.”

Din nods. “It is.” Inasmuch as the monster resembles an enormous droid, he had taken up the leadership of dismantling the thing with gusto. He’d used the Razor Crest to lift it out of the pond and lay it out at the edge of the forest, and a team of villagers had been taken off of harvest duty to help strip it down. “We pulled all of the electronics and stored them in the droid barn. Hydraulics will come out as we dismantle the structure. Whatever you make off of the scrap should make up for what you lost on the harvest.”

Omera’s brows lift in pleased surprise. “That’s good to hear. Thank you for your work on that.”

He only tips his head to the side in acknowledgement.

Cara rolls her eyes. The man just will not take the bait. “He’s even more fun once you get him in a krill pond. I didn’t expect a guy wearing so much armor to be that maneuverable in the water.” Her grin is devilish.

Din lets out a long-suffering sigh. “You wouldn’t give my rifle back.”

“It’s a nice rifle! Where can I get one of those?”

“You can’t,” he says. “It’s a Mandalorian custom model. They’re not made anymore.”

What he doesn’t say is that all of the people who made them were murdered in the Purge. But both women are familiar enough with both firearms and history to put the pieces together.

Omera cuts in to stave off the awkward silence. “Disruptor weapons are illegal, anyway.” She casts Din a knowing smile.

Din ticks his shoulder in a semblance of a shrug. “That, too.”

“So I just have to arm-wrestle you for yours, huh?” Cara takes another sip of her spotchka.

Din shakes his head. She doesn’t realize that the Amban is literally part of his religion. He doesn’t exactly pray over the thing, not quite, but he can’t deny that he falls into a sort of meditative trance when he cleans it every evening. Its flawless operation is essential to his survival. Handing it to her the night of the ambush had been like handing her a piece of his soul. She had used it well. She had only teased at withholding it from him for a few moments, knowing better than to stay between a Mandalorian and his gun for too long. He’d have drowned anyone else who dared such a thing on the spot, but Cara had earned enough points with him by then for him to let it slide.

So, in reply to her offer of a battle of strength for the spoils of a piece of his soul, he says, “You can have it when I’m dead.” _Over my dead body_.

“Writing me into your will so soon?”

He tilts his head in Omera’s direction as if to say, _Do you see what I have to deal with every day?_

“Anyway…” Cara knocks back the remainder of her spotchka. “I’m beat. Bedtime for me. G’night, kids.” She stands and turns to head to her hut.

“Good night,” Omera says.

Din tips his head in her direction.

Silence falls once again after Cara’s departure, and Din picks up another piece of his blaster to clean, his mind latching onto the point that Omera knows about the legal status of disruptor weapons, then sliding back to the incredible marksmanship she had displayed both in training and during the battle. “So. Where does a krill farmer learn to shoot as well as you do?”

Omera’s smile is a mix of flattered and sorrowful as she takes another sip of spotchka. “I wasn’t always a krill famer.”

“That much is obvious.” His tone betrays nothing but a hint of curiosity.

She leans forward, elbows on her knees, mirroring his posture. “I fought for the Rebellion. Met Winta’s father during the war. The war ended, I got pregnant, and we came here. Sorgan was out of the way. Peaceful. A good place to raise a child.” She pauses, and Din watches as her gaze lingers somewhere at the base of the fire, as if savoring the memory. “Winta’s father died in a logging accident two months after she was born.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“Thank you.” Her expression is mournful now, and it breaks his heart a little. There’s something about her that seems familiar, but he can’t quite place it. Something about her that feels like home, but he doesn’t know why. Sorgan is nothing like either the village of his early childhood or Concordia, where the Mandalorians had raised him thereafter. It’s a place of peace unlike anywhere else he’s ever known. Violence is minimal. Life is simple. The only drawbacks are a result of that simplicity; most things are done by hand. Krill are harvested with wicker baskets, meals are cooked over fires, and clothes are woven from spun yarns on looms. Used to simply tossing his own clothes in the laundry unit on the ship, he’s had to wash them by hand in a tub and hang them to dry in the barn on a daily basis during his stay in the village. And Omera, well… her aptitude as a protector is as plain as the pan she had riddled full of holes with his rifle. It only adds to her aptitude as a mother, which is as plain as Winta’s love for her and free-spiritedness with her friends.

“You’ve done well by your daughter,” he says.

“Thank you,” Omera responds again, pride replacing some of the sorrow. She gazes off into the darkness, into the direction of the children’s laughter. “She’s done well here. Your boy does well here, too.” She pauses once more. “She’s quite taken with him.”

He only nods.

A backwater skughole of a planet. A middle-of-nowhere village that sees few strangers. A Rebel veteran who knows her way around a firearm and knows how to lay low. A little girl who appears to want a little brother.

The perfect place to stash a magical green baby wanted by Imps.

The kid can grow up in peace and quiet, no longer dragged around the galaxy by the man who sold him for beskar and then kidnapped him back. No longer dragged around the galaxy by a man who draws fire wherever he goes.

Din is all about flying under the radar, but Sorgan is too far below even for him. As relaxing as the last week has been, he can already feel the hunter crawling beneath his skin. He knows that a piece of him will always be feral, and war has been his natural habitat since the day his parents were murdered by a Separatist droid. The village is already beginning to feel like a cage. He’s seen nothing but reed huts and ponds and forest for the last seven days. It’s nice, but he’s not used to staying in one place for so long. There’s not much for him to do here other than patrol the forest and rip an AT-ST apart. And once the AT-ST is dealt with… well. He appreciates the down-time for now, but he can see boredom looming on the horizon.

He doesn’t belong here.

He’s not sure Cara does, either.

Her little speech about “early retirement” aside, she seems to share his restlessness and offers to spar with him on most afternoons. He knows his hand-to-hand ground game needs some work, and since that is her forte, she gives him a good schooling. They often draw an audience, off to the edge of the village, folks taking a break from their work in the heat of the day. Bets are sometimes placed, and the odds are usually even. Cara has youth, size, and strength on her side. Din has experience, agility, and armor on his. Currently, the score is in her favor, but only just.

Omera watches as the armored figure before her continues to polish his weapon. Details that are plain with most people are a mystery with him. His face. His name. Even the name of his little boy. And yet, he’s been forthright about details that many would prefer not to divulge. That his parents were killed. That he hunted people for money. That he had hunted the little green baby, traded him for beskar, only to turn around and kidnap him. She knows the man before her is capable of tremendous violence. She has seen firsthand his capabilities in a fight. She also knows he is capable of kindness. She has seen how gentle he is with his boy.

“So… you didn’t come to Sorgan to become a krill farmer.”

His shoulders twitch as something that approximates a laugh scratches through the helmet modulator. “No. We’re here for the same reason you are. It’s out of the way.”

“Out of the way from whom?”

“The Empire. The Guild.”

Omera nods. She does her best to hide a smile, keeping her gaze low to the base of the fire.

“Any idea how the AT-ST got here?” he asks her like he expects her to know. And yes, it’s a hell of a coincidence that a Rebel veteran and a piece of Imperial heavy machinery wound up so close together on such a backwater planet.

Her smile fades. She keeps her gaze low. “No,” she says.

* * *

Din and Cara check the Klatoonian camp the next day.

The place is deserted. The only bodies left are the ones they had killed a week ago, the surviving raiders not having taken the time to bury their dead before fleeing into the unknown. They search the bodies, and, like the ones that had dropped in the village, nothing of note is found. They enter what appears to have been a command hut of sorts, heavy scrapes along the packed dirt floor indicating the recent removal of heavy equipment, but little else. They return to the hut housing the large vats of what they had initially assumed was spotchka. Upon further inspection, they realize it’s not. The smell is all wrong. More like paint stripper and less like a beverage. “What the hell is all this doing here?” Cara says out loud.

All Din can do is heave a sigh and shake his head. “Any guess on where they went?”

Cara frowns. “Offworld, if they had the resources. A different village with easier pickings if they didn’t.”

Din’s frown mirrors the Shocktrooper’s, even if it’s concealed. He’s betting on the second possibility.

If the kid’s going to be safe here, he has to make sure their village isn’t the easiest target on the planet.

* * *

The next day, Omera walks at his side for the mid-day patrol. He and Cara have been doing four a day for the past week. Morning, mid-day, evening, middle of the night. They roll a set of dice each day after the morning patrol to randomly vary the times, directions, and responsibilities for the next set. He and Omera check the third of six proximity sensors that he established at regular intervals at a one-klick radius from the center of the village. He shows her how to change out the power cell, how to re-set it so it’s properly aligned with the two adjacent sensors, how to synch it with the central chipset he’s given her. She catches on quickly, asks insightful questions about weatherproofing and durability, where they could get spare parts, and so on. She breathes a sigh as they set off towards the next sensor. “It’s very generous of you to set this up for the village.” She casts a glance in the direction of the T-visor of his helm, but she can’t quite tell if he notices.

“The kids deserve to grow up safe.” He knows what it’s like to have recurring nightmares of his own village being raided. The sensors will be expensive to replace, but if it helps to stave off the same nightmares in these kids, it’ll be worth every dime.

“Thank you. It’s unusual to meet kind people who can do unkind work.”

“You’re welcome.” His tone is low, conciliatory. He can’t quite accept her gratitude, but he still makes the effort to be polite about it. He’s always made that effort. Not necessarily being nice, but… always tried to not be an asshole. Bartenders, shopkeepers, mechanics. The bystanders of his life who never asked to be within arm’s reach of someone who could kill them with his index finger. Never wanted to see a body get sliced in half or roasted to a crisp or disintegrated altogether, even if maybe they figured it was inevitable once someone like him came into view. The galaxy is an ever-decaying shitpile as far as Din can see, and he’s not sure if he’s been part of the solution or part of the problem for a while, now. Not being an asshole to people who he knows aren’t a threat is about all he knows how to do to be less of a problem.

Truth be told, his donation of the proximity sensors is mostly penance. The very least he can do to keep the kid safe after he leaves.

He owes the kid so much more than he could ever pay back. His very life, from the mudhorn. His very soul, from the beskar he now wears after selling him. He _has_ to leave the kid here, if only to keep from racking up an even greater debt.

They continue to walk through the forest, letting the companionable quiet settle in. Omera already moves with silence along the narrow game trail they follow. He watches her out of the corner of his visor as her eyes track all around them, something else that either comes naturally or was trained into her.

He takes a breath.

The village will be safe in her hands.

The boy will be safe in her hands.

She walks through the woods on silent feet, and she catches the minute cant of his helm in her direction.

She knows he’s watching her.

She hears the catch in his breath.

She’s able to hold back on her smile only long enough to turn her head as she sweeps her gaze away.

* * *

“Knock knock.” Omera announces her morning approach as always, the tray with his breakfast in her hands. After two weeks, this has become almost a ritual, as many things appear to be with him. She brings him breakfast, asks how the boy slept, then takes the boy with her to the common hut to eat with the others so the Mandalorian can have his meal alone. After the first time she had brought him food, he’d said he could pick meals up on his own so long as he could drop the boy off with someone for supervision, not wanting to trouble her. But the truth is she enjoys these moments alone with him, as short as they are. He’s starting to open up a little, asking more about life in the village, asking how the children are educated, how stable the krill and spotchka trades are. Not personal things by any means, but taking an obvious interest in what’s going on beyond the patrols. As nice as it is to accompany him on patrols, those moments don’t allow for conversation.

“Come in,” he says.

It always takes her a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the darkness inside. She just catches the glint of his helmet by the crib as she sets the tray on the table along the wall. “Did you two sleep through the storm last night?”

The baby gurgles like he knows he’s being talked about. “He woke up for a little bit, but he went right back down. Storms don’t bother him too much.”

“You’re lucky.” She smiles as she turns around to face him. “Winta would cry for hours after a storm for the first two years.” She notices that he’s still sitting on his cot, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together, when normally he’s up and pulling the boy out of the crib at this juncture. His posture is tense. “Is everything alright?”

He seems to draw a sigh, and then he stands. “I have something for you.” He turns, and she notices the long metal box that is on the cot, behind where he was sitting. She steps forward, hesitant, then sucks in a sharp breath when he opens it.

The rifle he had assigned to her for the raider ambush. The Relby V10.

Her knees almost give out from under her. “I… don’t understand.”

“It’s yours,” he says, and she thinks she detects a strained edge to his voice.

She knows the relationship between Mandalorians and their weapons. Knows what this must mean to him. Knows that he’s offering her a piece of his soul. It’s too much. She runs her hand along the barrel, unable to meet his gaze. “I can’t accept.”

“I insist,” he says. “I took it off of an Imp a few years back, so I don’t use it much. You’re more comfortable with it than I am.”

She shakes her head. “This isn’t Imperial standard issue.”

“No, it’s not. That’s why I took it. He didn’t deserve it. But you do. You helped save your village with it.” _You might end up saving the boy with it, too._

When he says it all like that, it makes it a little easier to accept. She’s finally able to turn and face him. “It’s beautiful. Thank you.”

He takes a breath, and he forces it to be slow and deep. She just called a firearm “beautiful” and it makes his head swim a little. She gets it, and he knows he’s made the right decision. “You’re welcome,” he says, and damned if he can’t keep his voice from cracking.

* * *

Cara and Din spar at the edge of the village in the late-afternoon light.

They’ve pulled a couple of the quarterstaffs from the post-ambush stockpile, and have settled into a steady rhythm of strikes, thrusts, and parries. This afternoon’s goal is just getting in a workout. The village has been calm for almost three weeks, and the warriors need an outlet for the nervous energy that builds up when things are too quiet for too long.

Din can’t help himself from admiring Cara’s technique. She’s matched him at pretty much every fighting style they’ve sparred with during their stay. She moves with deadly precision, knowing exactly how to use each part of her body with utmost utility. She’d make a hell of a Mandalorian, were it not for the fact that covering a face like hers with a helmet for the rest of her life would be a crime against nature. Under normal circumstances, she is probably more his speed than Omera. A warrior all the way through, versus a retired veteran escaping to a place of peace. A woman who likely prefers her encounters without strings attached, versus a widow raising a child. He knows the type because that’s how he is, himself. Trained against attachments that go too deep because war will sever them before you’re ready. The nomadic life of a bounty hunter offers few opportunities for intimacy and he’s nine months into a dry spell. He would seriously consider breaking it with Cara if she’d show any interest, but she hasn’t, and he won’t make the first move. A woman like her has no doubt put up with enough bullshit from creepers trying to get into her pants. A woman like her gets what she wants. If she wanted him, she’d have had him already. Instead, she eggs him on about Omera every chance she gets.

“How did target practice go today?” She asks as she thrusts with the staff.

He sidesteps her move. “Fine,” he says. Omera hardly needs it. She hit the target dead-center even at the farthest range for the Relby. Then he’d started throwing rocks into the air as makeshift clay pigeons to provide moving targets, and she brought all of those down as well.

“Looked more than fine,” Cara says, smirking as she strikes for his legs.

He blocks her strike. “Omera’s a good shot.”

“She that good in the sack, too?” She spins and twirls the staff.

“What?”

She catches him off-guard and cracks him across the face with the staff. It turns him half-way around and she catches him on the ass with her follow-through. He resets, unable to suppress a growl, angry at himself for letting her distract him but refusing to swallow the bait any further.

“Oh come on. You’re not fooling anyone, Mando. Target practice. Wandering off in the woods together every day.” They settle back into their previous strike-and-parry pattern. “You gave her that rifle, didn’t you?” She smiles.

“Jealous, Dune?”

“I do miss handling that Amban of yours.”

“I have enough ammo to go around.”

Cara’s smile drops into an open-mouthed grin and he sweeps her feet with his staff, bringing her to the ground. She groans in chagrined frustration as she gets back to her feet. She shakes her head. “I didn’t expect the innuendo attack from you.”

“Better learn to take the same smack you talk if you’re gonna fight bounty hunters.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” She resets, and they continue.

He lies on his cot that night, staring up at the ceiling through the view of the helmet. He’s slept with it on every night for almost three weeks now, and it’s getting to be a drag. The barn does not have a door with a lock. Only a curtain. Not enough protection from the outside. Even at night, too much light comes in through the window and the woven walls, not enough darkness on the inside with the kid in here with him.

He wonders if he could ever take it off for Omera.

He’s in his mid-forties. If he’s honest with himself, he’s not sure how much longer he can go on as a mercenary. The Guild is out. No more bounty hunting. Not at the rates and terms he’s used to, anyway. Merc work is less predictable; some of it’s fine, some… not so much. He figures there’s likely a puck out there with his name on it by now as well, cutting the chances for any kind of legitimate work down to almost nothing. His knees hurt. His back aches. He knows his days are numbered.

Why not just live out the rest of them here?

Omera mixes deadly marksmanship, beauty, and compassion in a way he’s never seen in a single person before and he doesn’t quite know how to handle it. Her kindness towards him and the kid is almost heartbreaking. No one has shown him this level of care and consideration since… well… he pushes the distant memory aside.

As much as he appreciates it, as much as it heals something in him he’d forgotten was broken, he doesn’t deserve it.

Not after what he’s done.

Selling the kid to the Imps is the crown jewel of accomplishments in a long career of murder and violence. He used to justify it all as a means to an end. Providing for the covert. Providing for the Foundlings. The deaths and imprisonments of others put food on the table. To be fair, his quarry generally weren’t good people. Some of them were nice, but that wasn’t the same as being good. They’d had it coming.

Until the kid.

Bounty hunters are occasionally hired to recover missing children, and Mandalorians in particular are usually good at that kind of thing, given their general proclivity towards kids. Din is the exception. He never took those jobs. He’s just not equipped to handle kids. As much as sponsoring Foundlings is a core value for him, he avoided them at the covert. He just… doesn’t know what to do or say around them.

He’d known the contract on the tiny green baby was not one of family reunification. These were Imps. The kid was powerful. Even a moron could add that up. But Din had turned him over anyway, the promise of a literal bucketload of beskar too much to deny. What it meant for the covert. What it meant for the Foundlings.

And now, after everything that went down on Nevarro, the covert had to move to a different system entirely.

The number of lives he disrupted with his actions is incalculable. 

Kidnapping the kid back is only the tip of an enormous iceberg of redemptive actions it would take to make up for it, and there’s no way he’ll ever melt that all down in his lifetime. He owes the kid his life. They both owe their lives to the covert.

The best plan is to leave the kid here, get back to Nevarro, and take out what’s left of the Imperial remnant. Nullify the bounties that are out on him and the kid. After that, find the covert, and do whatever he can to make up for the disruptions he caused. His days of earning may well be done, even after zeroing out the bounties. But he can defend. He can help train the older kids. He’ll be restricted to life underground, and it’ll suck. The loss of freedom that his life had given him will hurt, but he deserves it. It’s where he belongs.

He certainly doesn’t belong here.

He doesn’t deserve this kind of peace.

He doesn’t deserve Omera.

Not like she’d want him anyway. She’s been kind. She’s been generous. But she knows better than to get mixed up with the likes of him.

She came here for peace, and she knows he’s made of nothing but war.

* * *

With all the warning in the world, Omera brings her hands to his helmet. Places her thumbs against the vertical edges over his jaws. Slides her fingers along the rim at the bottom.

His reflex to snap his hands around the wrists of any and all who attempt such a move and remove them with excessive force is somehow suspended.

In that moment, understanding dawns on him with sudden clarity. Her feelings for him. How he would catch her gazing at him from the corner of her eye as they walked together in the woods. Her ritualistic meal deliveries. Her requests for target practice that she did not need.

All this time, he’d been looking for a mother for the kid.

And she’d been looking for a father for her daughter. A husband for herself.

She hesitates.

She looks him in the eye, as if she could meet his gaze through the T-visor.

The look on her face is patient and pleading at the same time. _Stop me if you want to. Please don’t stop me_.

And… god help him… part of him wants to let her do it. Part of him is _so tired_. Part of him is not ready to abandon the little boy _again_. Part of him is not ready to abandon _her_. Part of him is ready to hang it all up and let it all go.

But then that other part of him, the hunter, crawls once more under his skin. _Will you be so content a month from now? A year from now? Doing nothing but shucking krill for the rest of your life? Can you forgive yourself for abandoning the covert after they helped you?_

He’s already done the math on it.

And just as she begins to lift, just as she begins to pull his shell apart, as she has pulled the shells from so many tiny blue crustaceans, he brings his hands to her wrists, pulling her hands down with a gentleness he has never before allowed against another’s hands on his helmet. He stays her removal of his soul.

He chooses his Creed. He chooses the Way of the Mandalore over a life on Sorgan.

“I don’t belong here,” he says.

* * *

Din’s stomach sinks as he kicks the bounty hunter over and sees the fob, active and blinking, on the ground. He picks it up.

“Who’s he tracking?” Cara asks.

The fob’s blinking frequency is too slow for it to be keyed to either him or Cara given their proximity. Only one other candidate. _Dammit_. “The kid.”

“They know he’s here.”

“Yes.”

“Then they’ll keep coming.”

Din drops the fob back to the forest floor. “Yes.” He crushes it under his boot in frustration.

Cara watches as the Mandalorian marches back to the village, head down, shoulders set in a tense line. She doesn’t have to see his face to sense the rage boiling in him. They had been no more than a day from leaving the kid here with the villagers, unguarded. He would’ve been killed. Hell, it’s dumb luck that he hadn’t been killed just now. Dumb luck that Cara had gotten to the hunter in time after he’d tripped the proximity sensor. She shakes her head as she kneels down to check the hunter for any valuables. Mando is stuck with a kid with a ginormous target on his back. If they’re not safe on this backwater skughole, they’re not safe anywhere.

Sucks to be them.

Din curses to himself as he strides back. _Stupid. So. Fucking. Stupid_. He should’ve known better. Should’ve known that they would be spotted at the cantina in town. Parading around in full unpainted beskar with a green giant-eared baby. The two of them stand out like sore thumbs and will be recognized all over the galaxy by anyone with an ear out for bounties or anyone questioned by one. The severity of his situation crashes down on him all at once. Being out of Guild work and having to go after Imps on his own is one thing. Being out of Guild work _and_ being unable to drop the kid off somewhere safe _and_ thus being unable to take on the Imps is something else entirely. It’s not just his own ass on the line, anymore. He is now a homeless, soon-to-be-penniless sole guardian of a magical child and they are now officially on the run.

Together.

 _Goddammit_.

What the hell has he gotten himself into?

He follows the stampede of thermal tracks to the most distant hut in the village and finds Omera there with the children. “It’s safe,” he calls before reaching the doorway. “It was Cara’s shot. It’s safe to come out, now.”

The children leak out of the hut in a slow trickle, and he’s careful not to crowd the doorway. Some of them are still wary of him, _as well they should be_ , he thinks, and he doesn’t want to impede their escape. Omera is the last one out, holding the kid. _His_ kid, now, apparently. “What happened?” she asks.

Din shakes his head, waiting for the last of the kids to leave. Winta hangs back, looking at her mother. “Go along with the others,” Omera says, giving her daughter a warm smile. “It’s safe.”

The girl doesn’t quite look convinced, but knows when she’s being excused from a conversation, so she turns and follows her friends.

“Cara shot a bounty hunter,” Din says. “He was after the kid. I’m…” He pauses, gathering the courage to admit his idiocy. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think we’d get tracked here. I was wrong. It’s not safe for us to stay. We’ll leave at first light tomorrow.” The sorrow that had edged his voice earlier is gone. Now it’s laced with anger.

Anger at himself. Anger at the Empire. Anger at a galaxy that just won’t stop hounding him, no matter how hard he tries to escape.

Omera’s face, a beacon of expressiveness to begin with, flows through a kaleidoscope of expressions. Fear. Sadness. Loss. And maybe relief? Sadness at first for losing the child before she really had a chance to be his mother, chased by relief that she would not, after all, be saddled with a constant reminder of the man who had brought him here? Finally, she opens her mouth, and even then, it’s another moment before words come out. “You’ll need the droid cart to get everything to your ship, then.”

Din breaths a silent thank-you to the _Manda_. A logistics discussion is about all he can handle, right now. “Yes, thank you. It won’t return until the end of the day. I’m sorry.”

Omera’s gaze drops. “That’s fine.” Her tone is even as she hands the kid back over to him. For his part, the kid seems mostly unfazed, save for a bit of reservation, ears low with a soft droop, seeming to sense the tension between the two adults. Omera turns and returns to the pond she had been working, head down, arms crossed over her chest.

Din watches her retreat for a few moments, then turns his head down to the baby in his arm. “You’re hard to get rid of,” he says.

The baby smiles and giggles. Din lets out another sigh and heads to the barn to pack up.

* * *

Din finds himself at the threshold of Omera’s home that night, the kid standing by his left foot, looking up at him with his typical wide-eyed innocence.

As if the kid has no idea that this is _all about him_.

Din takes a deep breath and knocks on the reed frame of the entryway. He hears the shuffling of feet and the curtain that serves as a door is pulled away to reveal Omera’s face, backlit by the oil lamp burning on the table behind her, but he can see the sorrow still residing on her face in the light of the two moons behind him.

She can’t find any words.

But that’s ok. He’s the one coming to her. This is on him.

“I’m sorry.” The words come out broken and ragged, and he pauses to swallow. The kid uses the opportunity to invite himself inside, waddling straight to Winta as she sits at the table, his arms outstretched. Her expression is no happier than her mother’s, but she scoops him up anyway and holds him close, knowing this may well be her last opportunity to do so. Din can’t suppress the sigh that comes out of him, and he makes a belated request. “May we come in?”

Omera turns to her daughter for a moment, but Winta doesn’t notice, her full attention focused on the baby. She turns back and steps out, draws the curtain closed, and starts to walk. “It’s better if we talk outside.”

He tips his head in acknowledgement and matches her stride, uncharacteristically, though not unexpectedly, slow. He knows she wants to be out of hearing distance from her daughter, and waits until they’ve gained an appropriate distance before starting again. “I’m sorry I misled you. That was not my intention.”

“I know. I misread you. I only saw what I wanted to see.”

He touches her elbow and stops walking. “You didn’t misread me.” He hesitates, wondering if his next words will do more harm than good, but knowing she deserves the truth. “Part of me did want to stay. Part of me did want to raise the kid here.” He bows his head, hands twitching in an aborted move to hold hers, thinking better of it, and he plows forward with the rest of it.

“… With you.”

Standing here in the moonlight, he’s hit with all that he is about to leave behind. Omera’s beautiful, chiseled features, her quiet strength, her protective skill. Winta’s hesitant curiosity, her resilience, her playfulness, her absolute devotion to the kid.

A ready-made family. A mother and daughter, the perfect puzzle pieces fit for a father and son.

A family. Something he thought he would never have. As a foundling who struggled to find acceptance among the Mandalorian clans of his childhood covert, he was raised in the Fighting Corps. Grown into a man who still avoids connections, generally finding them more trouble than they were worth, generally finding them little more than a path to betrayal; a Twi’lek who no doubt wants to shred him to ribbons, a droid that tried to kill the kid, a brother-in-arms who tried to unhelm him, an employer who tried to block his escape, to name but a few.

Connections with others have always come back to bite him in the ass.

Until the kid.

Until the kid saved him. Against the mudhorn.

And the Ugnaught who had so tirelessly aided him.

And then Cara. Cara, who had damn near kicked his ass right out of the gate, only to turn around and help him for little more than lunch money.

And then Omera. Who has done everything possible to make him feel welcome in an insular village. Who is the first person to show him an ounce of genuine compassion in his adult life. Who is the first person in decades to treat him like a living being first and a warrior second.

It’s Omera who has finally cracked something open in him, something buried deep under the beskar and the stoicism and the scars.

“If anything, I misread you,” he admits, shaking his head. “I didn’t catch on.” And he should have. He’d been so focused on what he was looking for that he had missed what was looking right back at him.

She takes his hands, her face mirroring his heart, her eyes searching for his through the visor. They stand there for a moment, frozen in the moonlight, and he can feel her trembling through his gloves. Her hands tighten around his and she takes a tentative step back, as if to lead him to the forest. “Come with me?” she asks, not wanting to overstep again, but clearly… wanting.

Oh, and he knows exactly where this will go. And he wants so much to follow. And removing the helmet is not a requirement to walk this path. And he does actually have protection stashed in a case on his belt. They can give each other everything they want in this moment.

But it’s too late.

They’ve already tied themselves into a loose knot. One that will get unwound when he leaves tomorrow so long as he steps away tonight.

He knows if he follows her into the forest right now, that knot will get pulled tight. Which, unlike a loose loop, will require a knife to cut through in the morning.

He stands firm, not following, but still holding her hands tight. “I won’t start what I can’t finish.”

She closes her eyes, doing her best to stave off the desperation from her face. “I’m not asking for that. I know you can’t give it. I’m asking for a single moment. It’s been so long… it’s been… not since…”

Din’s heart breaks open even more. Since her husband died? Good god that’s… awful.

And it’s not like his life as a nomadic bounty hunter isn’t already full of single moments. But those were almost entirely with other Mandalorians, women who were themselves Foundlings, raised in the Fighting Corps, nomads who implicitly understood that these moments came with no strings attached. The encounters never entailed anything close to love, but they were nonetheless enjoyable. They brought camaraderie. They were fun. Release in a safe environment where you could trust that no one would go for a helmet in the light, or where you could trust the dark.

He can give Omera what she wants right now. Can let her give him what he wants. It would no doubt be mind-blowing. But he knows it won’t be fun. He knows it’ll be heartbreaking and he knows there will be tears.

He was eighteen the last time he felt tears on his skin in the dark. It nearly tore him apart, then. He knows he’s not strong enough to take that again.

“I can’t give you that moment, Omera.” The words spill out of him before he realizes they’re in his head. _It’s all or nothing, for you_. He can’t bring himself to tell her he will give her nothing. Instead, before she can break his heart any further, he says, “I can only give you this one.” He brings his hand to the back of her neck and dips his head, pressing her forehead to his. He brings his other hand to the small of her back and holds her close.

She doesn’t resist, doesn’t freeze up against the cool of the beskar that separates them. Instead, she melts into it, closes her eyes, and brings her arms up around his shoulders. She trembles beneath his touch, and maybe he trembles a little beneath hers, too.

“Do you understand what this is?” he whispers.

She takes a few moments to consider before she answers, eyes still closed. “I think so, yes.”

She presses closer, giving him the full length of her body against his, and there’s no way she can’t feel what she’s done to him.

They stand that way for a long time, silent and still in the moonlight, the crickets and peeper frogs performing their nightly symphony all around them, and he can’t help but see the tears that escape from the closed lids of her eyes.

They do not reach his skin, and for that, he is thankful.

She pulls away from him, and he drops his hands. “I should get back to Winta,” she says.

The walk back is slow, and there’s one more thing he can’t understand. One thing that he can’t help himself from asking. “Why haven’t you remarried?”

“Surely you’ve noticed the lack of eligible bachelors my age in this village?”

“I can see that Caben and Stoke don’t measure up.” They’re ok guys, but he’d caught snippets of their performance during training and the ambush. They’re nice enough, but they’re not worthy of her. “No opportunities in town?”

“Not the kind I’m looking for.”

He touches her elbow and they stop walking. “Are _you_ happy here?”

“Winta is.”

“Maybe you don’t belong here, either.”

“My daughter does.”

They return to the hut to find said daughter still seated at the table, holding the baby. It’s hard to tell who is consoling who.

Din takes a knee before her, putting his visor at her eye level. “I’m sorry we have to leave. There are others like the one who came today who want to hurt the kid. It’s too dangerous for us to stay. I have to protect him.”

“Why would anyone want to hurt him?” She snuggles the kid closer as he tucks his head under her chin, the very model of a protective big sister, and it makes something tighten in his chest. He understands her confusion, had felt that very same confusion himself when the baby emerged from his blanket the very first time Din had laid eyes on him. _This is a baby. They told me fifty years old. This is a baby. The Imps sent me after a **baby**. And they’re ok with me **killing** it._

And then the mudhorn.

He’s not quite sure how to tell a little girl that the baby she’d been playing with and carting around for the last three weeks is wanted dead by the remnants of the Empire because he has magical powers.

“He’s… very special. Someone is afraid of how special he is.”

“But we can help!” the little girl protests. “Just like we did before! You taught the grownups how to fight. You can teach me too!”

He looks in Winta’s eyes and sees the hint of warrior she has inherited from her mother. Again, the call of a family yanks at his heart. Under other circumstances, he would adopt her as his own in a heartbeat. Instead, he breathes a measured sigh and tries to explain the cruelty of the galaxy to a kid who has already seen too much of it without doing even more damage. “The people who are after him are much stronger than the raiders here. I have to lead them away so they don’t hurt anyone here, too.”

“You’re going to fight them yourself?” Her face is a study of incredulity and worry, and he can’t blame her.

“We’ll be fine,” he says, hoping the tone of his voice convinces her even when he knows he’s lying through is teeth. He knows it’s not going to be fine. He knows it’s going to be a shitshow. He knows he cannot, under any circumstances, allow her to know these things.

The baby’s eyes slip closed for a few moments and he struggles to open them again, determined to remain awake while still in Winta’s arms. Omera notices and takes advantage of it. “It’s time for Mando and the baby to go to the barn, dear. It’s late.” Winta hands the baby over to Din, avoiding his gaze, turns out of the chair, and runs into the adjoining room with a sniff.

That could’ve gone better.

Omera follows him out. “When you get things sorted out, will you send a message? Let us know you’re safe?”

He dips his head. “I’ll try. It won’t be safe for me to contact you before then.”

“I understand.”

He breathes one last sigh. “Don’t…” He pauses, wondering if he’s being presumptuous, and decides to err on the side of caution. “Don’t wait for me. This could take years. You deserve to be happy.”

She nods, and just when he thinks she gets it, she asks, “Don’t you?”

“Don’t I what?”

“Deserve happiness?”

 _No. No I don’t_.

He turns and walks away, child tucked into his arm.

* * *

Seeing the light from Cara’s hut on his way back to the barn, he stops and knocks on the door frame. He hears her footsteps approach before she draws the curtain aside. She nods as if she’s not surprised to see him there and leans her shoulder on the frame. “Heading out tomorrow?” she asks.

“Yeah. First thing.”

“I’ll head back to town and stay there for a while. Keep an eye on things. Head off anyone who looks like trouble. I’ll let Omera know where to find me if they need me.”

“That’s a good plan. Looks like you get the planet to yourself after all.”

She quirks an eyebrow. “Know where you’re headed yet?”

“Kuat. Go ahead and tell anyone who asks. We’ll make ourselves conspicuous for a while, establish a last-known-location for anyone with a fob to draw them away from here, then bug out.”

Cara nods. “And after that?”

“I have a few ideas, but it’s better if you don’t know.”

“Fair enough.” She sighs, pushing off the frame and starts to draw the curtain back over the entry. She pauses half-way through. “Last chance to hand over that glorious Amban.” She smiles, knowing his answer.

A sorry approximation of a laugh scratches through his modulator. “Not a chance, Dune.”

**Author's Note:**

> Every now and then I stumble upon the sentiment that Omera was totally out of line when she went for Din’s helmet and that there wasn’t anything he could possibly see in her. I guess I saw it differently. He was clearly impressed with her sharpshooting, and she had to have picked that skill up somehow. She gave him all the time in the world to stop her from lifting the helmet, and in great contrast to his normal reaction to everyone else who tried to remove it (even when Cara was trying to save his life!) he took all the time in the world to stop her. They’d had three weeks together, and I figured a fair amount happened in that time for him to not snap her wrists by mere reflex. This story is the result. 
> 
> I also happened to stumble upon a [Guns of the Mandalorian](https://www.range365.com/guns-mandalorian/) article a long time ago that described the rifle that Omera used. That’s the only reason I know what it was.


End file.
